It’s not just teevee – although god knows the general priggishness of Canadians as regards mockery of public figures is what leads to bloodless, neutered crap like Air Farce polluting the airwaves for decades at a stretch – it’s everything. When I worked for Torontoist, I got complaints about making fun of Conrad Black, for Christ’s sake. Let me repeat: Conrad fucking Black. People were getting offended on his behalf. Not even people who liked him.

And that was Conrad Black – you don’t even want to imagine the shitstorm that went down on the occasion when it was revealed that Patrick Swayze had cancer. A simple, innocuous joke about Road House (since Jeff Healey had died of cancer the year before) erupted a jihad of self-righteousness like you would not believe. Cancer, apparently, is serious business and you should never make fun of cancer because people die from cancer and it is tragic. (Because I was polite, and because I did not want to give my editor a hard time, I did not suggest that they quit making blog comments and get down to finding a cure for cancer. I mean, if it’s so serious, why aren’t you going to med school, huh?)

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the Canadian literature scene, which is the biggest pile of gladhanding shitbags imaginable. You cannot say a bad thing about Margaret Atwood in this country. Not that there’s much cause, she’s generally pretty cool, but if you so much as mention that her attitude about Oryx and Crake was insufferably pretentious (it is a fucking science fiction novel, Atwood, and if you don’t like it, then don’t write science fiction and then say you “don’t like that label”) – well, be prepared to be corrected by the Canadian media, who will remind you that she is Very Important and a Proud Canadian and so on and so forth.

Honestly, the Canadian social polity in general needs a huge kick in the ass. An enormous one. By someone who’s not going to fucking apologize right afterwards. The reason we don’t have a Jon Stewart in this supposedly funny country is because all the potential Jon Stewarts either leave or turn into Rick Mercer, who I am pretty sure has sucked every dick in Parliament so politicians will give him theoretically funny interview segments.

Top comment:Americans were pretty humorless until Mark Twain came along. By contrast, the first piece of British literature is Canterbury Tales, aka Extended Fart Joke Tales.— Rebecca

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I thought most of the reason Air Farce was on the air so long was because Canadians are paranoid about being not America and give wheelbarrelfulls of money to anything Canadian-produced, no matter how stupidly shit-tastic it is, just to have some pure Canadian stuff that’s not American, but Canadian.

Canadians are extraordinarily funny. John Candy,Martin Short, Brent Butt,Derek Edwards , Ron James, Gerry Dee,Andy Jones and Rick Mercer have kept this country and the U.S.A in stiches for years . This blog is lame and incorrect ,Another blog about comedy from a self-loathing Canadian.

Don’t give Americans tooooooooooooo much credit, dude. Remember the palava over Steven Colbert at the Press Club dinner a couple of years back. Our media types can be just as joyless and self-important as anyone’s. Then as now, watch for the grave intonations that ‘it just Wasn’t Funny’ as cover for the pissy-pantsedness.

I loved that press correspondents’ dinner. “People say new appointments are like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This administration isn’t sinking, it’s soaring! If anything, it’s like rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg!” I’m sure I got the phrasing wrong somewhere. At least Alito was able to laugh at his own expense.

–“Canadians are extraordinarily funny. John Candy,Martin Short, Brent Butt,Derek Edwards , Ron James, Gerry Dee,Andy Jones and Rick Mercer have kept this country and the U.S.A in stiches for years . This blog is lame and incorrect ,Another blog about comedy from a self-loathing Canadian.”–

“Canadians are extraordinarily funny. John Candy,Martin Short, Brent Butt,Derek Edwards , Ron James, Gerry Dee,Andy Jones and Rick Mercer have kept this country and the U.S.A in stiches for years . This blog is lame and incorrect ,Another blog about comedy from a self-loathing Canadian.”

I think this post just further proves MGK’s point. You can’t even have a sense of humour about not having a sense of humour

Oh, and Atwood so hates her public she literally invented a machine so she could sign their books without being in the same room as them. And no one in the Canadian media, or even the blogs, said “what a stuck-up clapped-out sack of dung.”